I notice that by default, postgres sets numeric fields to storage MAIN. What exactly does that mean? Does that mean it stores it in some type of compressed BCD format? If so, how much performance gain can I expect by setting the storage to PLAIN? Also, the docs say that char(n) is implemented more or less the same way as text. Does that mean that setting a field to, say, char(2) PLAIN is not going be any faster than text PLAIN? That seems a bit counter-intuitive. I would hope that a char(2) PLAIN would just reserve two chars in the record structure without any overhead of pointers to external data. Is there a reason this isn't supported?
__ David B. Held Software Engineer/Array Services Group 200 14th Ave. East, Sartell, MN 56377 320.534.3637 320.253.7800 800.752.8129 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match